


I'm Proud of You

by nikola



Category: Supernatural
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-21
Updated: 2014-08-21
Packaged: 2018-02-14 02:02:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2173872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nikola/pseuds/nikola
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>9x06, "I'm proud of you," Castiel's thoughts</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm Proud of You

 “I’m proud of you.”

 A lot of things go through his mind. For instance, he catalogues that look as something he’s familiar with; not quite a lie, no, but not entirely true, either. He wonders why he says _proud,_ when his eyes say something different. The car is small and air doesn’t travel, lingers in the space between them even though the windows are open. Smell of oil, cheap potato chips. He thinks a lot of different things. Consciousness is a tricky thing. Time is irrelevant; here, in the maze of yesterday and today and tomorrow, forever can be a second. That split moment between a spoken truth and a lie in his head. Memories do not wait in lines to be examined and decided – they come in waves, each water particle indistinguishable from the next. Music and season and fabrics all mingle and there is a constant _feeling_ that isn’t defined by any of them. He tastes the scalding coffee on the tip of his tongue. He remembers the Sacrificial lamb of the ancient Greeks. They had been praying to their Gods; he had been waiting for his.

 He memorizes the face. The voice, the uneasy smile, something that quavers. Indignation, strangely, finds a way through the crippled state of his mind. _You’re proud of me_? He wants to ask. He also wants to ask _why._ And something else, too. Why did you tell me to go? But he won’t. He knows better; that although his entire mind aches with the question, he won’t ask because it’s not his question to ask. Maybe, in the past, he could have. Many mistakes ago, many wrong decisions, and more lies than he can count – he would have. Also, because he knows the answer to that already.

 No, he decides, what he really wants to ask is this: can I come back?

 He wants to go back. Wants the familiar scoff, the smell of ancient books and leftover burritos. Shiny killing tools on the wall and a silent set of footsteps moving about somewhere else in the space – the space that they share. The kind of space that embraces both presences equally and tells them each of the other; softly, silently, that you knows their breaths better than your own. The air shaped differently. Something warm in the back of his mind at knowing that they share that same air, that when he places his feet carefully on the marble floor he knows that it has been walked on, can imagine the warmth still whispering and lingering.

 He wants to go back, and call it his home. Can I come back, he wants to ask, but knows he won’t.

 “Thank you, Dean,” he says.


End file.
